March 13, 2007

This story bothers me, not because I am trying to defend homosexuality as much as I question the conservative approach to morality and the military. Peter Pace responded yesterday to a question about the Clinton era "don't ask, don't tell" policy:

"'I believe homosexual acts between two individuals are immoral and that we should not condone immoral acts,' Pace said in a wide-ranging discussion with Tribune editors and reporters in Chicago. 'I do not believe the United States is well served by a policy that says it is OK to be immoral in any way."

I would like to agree with him--that immorality is a bad thing. Except the credibility here is not just lacking, it is AWOL.

Let's revisit this. Bad war planning (well, if you can call it planning) with too few troops and too little armor in a war based on faulty intel and horrible policy--but it is the gay guys who are "immoral."

When the Generals want more troops they get Rumsfeld, and when the Generals want fewer troops they get a Surge. But it is the gay guys who are immoral.

When the war creates unbelievable increase in severe brain injuries, the response is to cut funding for research into brain injuries. Oh yeah, but it is the gay people who are immoral.

And when the troops come home, their rehab is in mice-infested mold holes--all assisted by the private contracts handed out to Bush's friends. But gay people, blah blah blah.

"The U.S. Army is ordering soldiers at Fort Benning classified as 'medically unfit to fight' to war in Iraq, Salon reports, asking aloud if it is an 'isolated incident or a trend.'

'As the military scrambles to pour more soldiers into Iraq,' writes Mark Benjamin for Salon, 'a unit of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division at Fort Benning, Ga., is deploying troops with serious injuries and other medical problems, including GIs who doctors have said are medically unfit for battle. Some are too injured to wear their body armor, according to medical records.'

Benjamin cites recent cases of troops at Fort Benning whose medical profiles were 'downgraded ... without even a medical exam, in order to deploy them to Iraq.'"

Yeah, the gay interpretor who speaks Arabic is immoral. The President who destroys our military is "family values" friendly. Unbelievable.

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